The Cobweb Tarantella
by Nightsmoke
Summary: In 2014, the Namimori Board of Health decides to demolish Kokuyo Land. Although Tsuna sees it as yet another way for the universe to torture him, it turns out to be an opportunity to get closer to his Family. Three part series.
1. Chapter 1

All characters © Amano Akira

_Summary:_ Fandom: KHR. In 2014, the Namimori Board of Health decides to demolish Kokuyo Land. Although Tsuna sees it as yet another way for the universe to torture him, it turns out to be an opportunity to get closer to his family.

* * *

><p><em><strong>The Cobweb Tarantella<strong>_

_March_

The first thing a nineteen-year old Sawada Tsunayoshi did that Saturday morning was choke on his tea.

Well, technically it was the fourth or fifth thing he did that morning (excluding waking up, brushing his teeth, and getting dressed), but nonetheless it was a harsh alert that it was going to be one of _those_ days.

Tsuna pounded on his chest a few times to get the liquid out of the wrong pipe and wiped the excess chai from his chin. When he had recovered he gaped at the newspaper again to make sure that he'd read correctly the first time.

Reborn twirled a curlicue calmly from behind the steam of his espresso, not even bothering to look up. "Something the matter, Tsuna?"

"Th-they're going to demolish Kokuyo Land!" Tsuna exclaimed, pointing to the business/economy section of the Namimori newspaper. In high school, Tsuna had usually been too busy oversleeping or scrambling to get ready for school to sit down and read the paper. Upon becoming Vongola, however, Reborn suggested it was prudent that he keep up with current affairs, however local they may be. Now Tsuna was glad he did.

_" 'Kokuyo Land, an amusement park established in 1981, currently occupies the corner of Mitsuyo and Bentai street...'_ wait, wait, let me get to the bottom...ah! _'The Namimori Health and Sanitation Department deemed the remnants of Kokuyo Land unsafe and unfit for restoration. Funding has been going into the creation of a new shopping facility in the space that sports the remains of Kokuyo Land, ' "_ Tsuna read. _" 'Reconstruction begins at the end of the month.' "_

"A shopping center? Maybe I'll be able to get a sweater for Leon," Reborn remarked as he sipped his coffee.

Tsuna shook his head at the paper. "What are we going to do?"

"What do you mean?"

"Mukuro's there!"

Reborn let the steam curl around his chin. He blinked his beady black eyes, unperturbed. "So?"

Tsuna shot him a disdainful glance. "Shouldn't you be the one telling me 'it's your family, Dame Tsuna, and you need to take care of them' or something like that?" he asked, putting on his best Reborn impression. It had gotten better over the years, but he still got hit whenever he did it.

Reborn, not having had enough caffeine yet to get up off his pile-of-books highchair, merely said, "I shouldn't need to tell you that any more. You're an adult."

"You're right, you're right," Tsuna sighed and put down the paper. He stared at his chai, now cold, with distaste. "Mukuro is perfectly capable of taking care of himself. He'll probably tell me the same thing, but I should check in with him anyway."

-.-.-.-.-

"I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself, Sawada Tsunayoshi."

Tsuna shivered in his suit jacket, suddenly finding it ridiculous that he had dressed up to visit Mukuro. Central heating was not one of Kokuyo Land's scant working utilities, and the late March air whistled in freely through the ubiquitous cracks of the building. The theater room was especially drafty, but it was where Tsuna always came to talk to Mukuro. It was where they had first met.

"I know that, Mukuro," he said, resisting the urge to rub some warmth into his arms. He didn't know how Mukuro wasn't freezing in his camouflage tee. "I'm not saying that you can't. I'm only giving you the offer to stay at the Vongola Headquarters until you find another housing alternative. You are Family, after all."

Mukuro looked abstrusely amused. "I'll politely decline, then," he said.

"What about Ken and Chikusa? And Chrome?"

"Not to worry." Mukuro closed his eyes, smiling. "We have already found a place to stay until renovations are complete."

"Renovations?" Tsuna echoed. "Are you saying you'll come back here once the shopping center is built?"

"Possibly. Then we could steal whenever we wanted to."

"Forget I asked," Tsuna sighed, running a hand through his hair and making it stick up in even more comical spikes. "I can't do much more, since you refused my offer for help. Can I at least ask where you're staying?"

"At the abandoned Kirihara condos on the outskirts of Namimori," Mukuro answered immediately.

"You mean the ones the Varia stayed in all those years ago?"

Mukuro smirked. "There's a reason it's abandoned now."

"W-well is it...you know, adequate?"

Mukuro's smirk blossomed into a quiet chuckle. "Of course," he replied, fingering a lock of dark hair that had fallen between his eyes. "This one even has hot water."

"Fine, fine. You know I still don't approve," Tsuna said.

"And you know I don't care. As I said before, Sawada Tsunayoshi, in this metempsychosis cycle, I am twenty years old. I can take care of myself and the others around me. We do not need the help of the mafia." As if to prove his point, Mukuro's right eye glowed a pernicious red in the dim light.

"We can still provide you with financial support," Tsuna tried.

Another chuckle. "I don't need your money."

"If you guys don't want to stay with us we can at least find you more...appropriate lodgings!"

"And what landlord can you think of would house fugitives like ourselves, Sawada Tsunayoshi?"

Sometimes it was impossible to reason with Mukuro (especially when he had a good point). Tsuna didn't know what Mukuro was thinking half the time, and conversation with him took every ounce of Tsuna's concentration despite the fact that his verbal opponent was a middle-school dropout. Albeit Mukuro was a middle-school dropout with the vocabulary of a literary scholar, but that was beside the point. Improving awkward relations such as these, as it was with most of Tsuna's Guardians, was a slow but steadily improving process. It took years.

There was one thing Tsuna wanted to ask Mukuro, and he almost did. Kokuyo Land had escaped the public eye for almost a decade, which was undoubtedly Mukuro's doing. Mukuro only let those in who he wanted to let in, and he let his illusions take care of the rest. Tsuna vaguely wondered what other people saw when they passed by the corner of Mitsuyo and Bentai street.

He also wondered why Kokuyo was drawing its long-deserved attention now. Namimori's budget, sanitation, resources?

Or was Mukuro's power over the place weakening?

Tsuna almost asked, but at the last minute he decided it extrinsic to his persuasive argument. Sitting there with his right eye pinwheeling lazily in the dimness and a Cheshire cat's grin on his face, Mukuro didn't _look_ weak.

"Point taken. Since you guys are convinced you can manage on your own, I won't bother you about it," Tsuna concluded uncomfortably. With a final sigh, he drew his jacket tighter across his torso. "But don't forget that we are Family, Mukuro. My door will always be open."

_to be continued._


	2. Chapter 2

All characters © Amano Akira

_Summary:_ Fandom: KHR. In 2014, the Namimori Board of Health decides to demolish Kokuyo Land. Although Tsuna sees it as yet another way for the universe to torture him, it turns out to be an opportunity to get closer to his family.

* * *

><p><em><strong>The Cobweb Tarantella<strong>_

_April_

From the floor below, Tsuna could hear Gokudera playing Liszt's Consolation no. 3. As he listened, Tsuna realized that no other piece was more fitting for a rainy day such as today. Forget "April showers bring May flowers;" if this kept up half of Japan would be under water by the time May came around. After two weeks the rain had shown no signs of letting up, and although Yamamoto was loving it, Tsuna found it put a damper on his mood.

With creases of concern deepening his brow (as they often did when he was looking at her), Sawada Tsunayoshi eyed Chrome Dokuro as she slowly sipped at a cup of hot chocolate that he had insisted she drink. The hot chocolate was laced with brandy, although Chrome did not know this. Tsuna had seen Chrome upset before. He had seen her worried, ill, frightened, and mildly angry, but he hadn't known that she could even _do_ hysterical until she had shown up on his door soaking wet and muddy.

She hadn't been seen at headquarters for two days, but unsurprisingly, no one had seemed to notice. Chrome was exceptional at fading out; after all, most regarded her face as another pink circle in a sea of flesh. A No-name, an existence so slight that when pressed into the earth, it made no print. Unnoticeable. That is, until she came back this afternoon. It had taken a good half-hour to calm her down.

It was Tsuna's own humble opinion that as far as comforting people went, anyone— Yamamoto or even Bianchi would have been better than him. When Chrome showed up, Tsuna had wanted to call in Haru or Kyoko; if the situation was emotionally related (or worse, _female_ related, Tsuna shuddered), it was best that the girls take care of it. To his surprise, Chrome insisted that it was a private matter that she wished to speak to only him about. Tsuna nervously accepted, although he knew he wasn't really good with these kinds of things.

"Chrome," he began gently, "did someone attack you?"

Chrome stared at her cup miserably, her free hand fumbling with the tassels on the throw rug draped over her shoulders. She shook her head. "No, Boss," she replied, "but I need you to come with me right away!"

Tsuna glanced at the dark mud caking her uniform and bare legs again, and threw a skeptical look at the downpour outside. "Why?" he asked. "What's wrong?"

"I-I don't really know," she began. Tsuna saw that despite the mild sedative, she was still shaking. "I don't know!"

"It's, okay," Tsuna reassured her softly. He closed his eyes as the Consolation downstairs slid into a minor key. "Can you tell me what you know?" he edged.

Chrome swallowed and gave a quick nod. "Mukuro-sama's in trouble. They all are."

"Eh? W-why?" A shiver suddenly trickled down his spine, as if some of the rain from outside had gotten in without him knowing it. He began to get a very bad feeling indeed.

"At first I didn't know," Chrome said. "Mukuro-sama was...keeping me out. Usually, I can break in if he's weakened or injured, or if I try really hard, but I— I don't like to do that."

Tsuna laid his hand on top of hers, since it was still wrought with tremors. Chrome looked at him gratefully. "Did you see something?" he asked her.

Chrome nodded, and a few tears spilled over her lower lashes and down her cheeks. "That's why I left, Boss. I needed to find them, to make sure they were okay..."

Tsuna frowned at this. "Find them? They're staying at the Kirihara condos," he said slowly. "Right?"

Chrome smiled sadly. It had been a while since Tsuna had seen a smile so twisted with worry. "Is that what he told you?" she asked. Tsuna began to feel a sinking feeling in his chest. It was the kind of feeling you got when you've realized that you swam out too far in the ocean and lost sight of the shore.

"Chrome," Tsuna's face became stony. "Where is Mukuro?"

She gripped her mug tighter, knuckles white and protesting over the ceramic. "I can't really...you...you need to see it, Boss. There's nothing I can do!"

"Alright." He got up and went to get his umbrella and his keys. He quickly scoured his closet for some old boots to give Chrome, emerging with some faded Timberlands and a dry poncho. "Do I...should I call the medics?" he asked, holding out the clothes to her and reaching for his cell phone. His intuition told him they would be needed.

Chrome nodded, taking the boots and poncho. Her good eye bore into his, overwrought and pleading. "Please, help him."

Tsuna gave a nod, and motioned for her to follow him into the rain. Downstairs, the Consolation trickled to a quiet end.

-.-.-.-.-

Tsuna had driven himself; an oddity in an of itself considering driving was something he normally had Gokudera or Ryohei take care of. With roads blocked off and slippery mudslides here and there, it was a harrowing task. The Vongola's silver Honda was good, but it was no truck. By the time Tsuna arrived, his windshield wipers were groaning in protest and Chrome had begun to tremble again. She fretfully pulled his sleeve as he stepped out of the car. He could hear the sirens of the medics, dispatched on Hibari's order, close behind him.

Tsuna felt the wet squelch of damp earth underneath his boots as he allowed himself to be led by Chrome. Finally, she stopped, and pointed. Tsuna stared. He could hear Hibari himself getting out of the first ambulance car (distinctive by his calm, slow strides), and he even heard the barely audible exhale of his Cloud Guardian behind him as he saw what was ahead.

For a minute Tsuna just stared, eyes wide and the rain pattering loudly onto the back of his umbrella. The he took a deep breath and shook his head once, twice.

"Oh, Mukuro," he said.

_to be continued._


	3. Chapter 3

All characters © Amano Akira

_Summary:_ Fandom: KHR. In 2014, the Namimori Board of Health decides to demolish Kokuyo Land. Although Tsuna sees it as yet another way for the universe to torture him, it turns out to be an opportunity to get closer to his family.

* * *

><p><em><strong>The Cobweb Tarantella<strong>_

"He lied to me," Tsuna fumed to a silent Hibari Kyouya as he paced the reception room of Namimori Hospital. The dirt on his boots left watery marks on the sterile hospital tiles (which had earned him several disproving glares from the nurses), but he had been too frazzled to bring a change of clothes. In actuality, Tsuna was more than frazzled. He was angry. He was, by nature, of a meek and caring disposition, but the one thing that simply got on his nerves was when the people he cared about endangered their own lives. And yes, he did care about Mukuro...in that cautious, if somewhat pitying way that Reborn had warned him about countless times.

And in his own, disillusioned way, Hibari cared too, even if all he claimed was, "I don't really care, but then I wouldn't be able to bite him to death anymore." Hibari had paid the hospital out of his own pocket to give Mukuro, Ken, and Chikusa private facilities.

"He lied to me," Tsuna said again, grazing a hand through his hair and taking it out to open a palm toward Hibari. "Why would he do that?"

Hibari gave a shrug. "They probably didn't want to live with the likes of you," he replied, arms folded. It wasn't a malicious statement; merely an indifferent observation that was probably more accurate than Tsuna wanted to admit at the moment.

"I never said they had to! I merely offered to help them find a place."

"Hn." Hibari closed his eyes. "And look how they responded. Useless herbivores can go die."

To this day, Tsuna wasn't sure if that was meant to be a compliment or not.

-.-.-.-.-

Although Tsuna may have had the best natural intuition in Japan, he was oblivious to the fact that Mukuro had been lying through his teeth. In all actuality Kokuyo's former denizens _had_ no place to go, but Mukuro, Ken, and Chikusa had all been unanimous on the front that they did not need "outside aid." Chrome, on the other hand, was with the Vongola more often than not, so she had separately taken Tsuna up on his offer. Tsuna had breathed a sigh of relief at that, thanking god for small favors.

Tsuna sometimes forgot how apt Mukuro was as a liar. In general, Mukuro loved to pontificate and demonstrate his extensive vocabulary _ad nauseam,_ so by the time Tsuna had taken it all in it was too late to try to remember what was true and what was simply a farce.

So in one of Mukuro's less intelligent moves, he had decided to temporarily live in the underpass of Namimori's main bridge. The bridge itself was immense; it was part of Interstate 46 and led to all the main roads in the town, crossing over the river and gracing Namimori with easier transportation circa 1924.

Stubborn pride and habit often diluted wit, which was quite common inside and outside the Italian mafia. Most of the girls knew this; the boys did not. Mukuro was probably one of the smartest people in the Vongola (his intelligence only rivaled by the likes of Shamal, Belphegor, Irie, and Gokudera, to name a few), but he did not foresee the disastrous effects his actions would have due to the fact that, since he was proclaimed jackanapes Rokudo Mukuro, he obviously needed help from no one. His cohorts put up little argument since they shared similar sentiments.

On the morning the construction began, Tsuna had no appetite. He kept up with the news when he could, and since he had never heard from Mukuro, he assumed that they had not needed him after all. Thinking back, he should have checked in with them. He really should have checked. That was his job as boss, after all, wasn't it? Mukuro had provided him with an existing place (which in actuality had not been abandoned but was operating just fine), yet Tsuna had trusted his Guardian and had not looked into it.

It was times like these when Tsuna wondered privately if he was indeed too trusting of others. Then again, a deeper, more mature part of himself reminded him that this was also his greatest strength.

Mukuro had lied artfully, and probably would have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for Chrome. It had been one of Tsuna's more shocking moments to discover Kokuyo's former inhabitants camping out under the bridge. Tsuna had taken charge like the boss he was becoming, calling in for help and threatening Mukuro, Ken, and Chikusa to get in the ambulance lest they be handed over to Vindice. They had been too weak at the time to protest.

The official diagnosis, which Tsuna found out later, was ghastly. He remembered studying the Holocaust in his sophomore year of high school, and one of his textbooks had shown pictures of the camps at Auschwitz and Dachau. Seeing Mukuro, Ken, and Chikusa under that bridge brought those pictures to mind. To a lesser extent, certainly, but he had seen the same sunken looks. They had been living on choco-bits and whatever else they could scrounge from the school vending machines. All of them had some form of infections, whether viral or bacterial. Mukuro outweighed them all with a "whopping" 52 kilos; Ken had a respiratory infection that bordered on full-blown pneumonia, and all had developed severe vitamin deficiencies. Give or take another week, they would have died.

Tsuna could see why Chrome had been a little upset.

-.-.-.-.-

Being too malnourished to do anything other than sleep for a few days, Rokudo Mukuro woke up in a bad mood.

He smiled briefly at Chrome, who he found dozing in the corner, but his smile quickly dissipated. There was an IV drip in his arm. And a certain Sawada Tsunayoshi was staring at him.

"Are you all right, Mukuro?" Tsunayoshi asked, his brown eyes big and earnest.

"I hate hospitals, Sawada Tsunayoshi," was the first thing Mukuro said. From his spot on the bed and covered in white cloth, he could almost pass for normal (albeit the mildly disturbing heterochromia). His pupils were pinprick-small in the crisp hospital lights and his dark hair was tucked behind his ears. Tsuna thought then that his face looked very pale, very open.

"Yes, well," Tsuna pursed his lips, eyes lidding, "this hospital is keeping you alive."

"And Ken? Chikusa?"

Tsuna rubbed his face, looking as tired as Mukuro felt. At least Mukuro had the common decency to ask about them, which actually didn't surprise Tsuna at all. He'd known that, although Mukuro claimed otherwise on several different occasions, those two and Chrome were perhaps one of the world's only individuals that Mukuro actually gave a damn about. "Down the hall. They're fine for the most part."

Mukuro cleared his throat to rid it of its rustiness and tried to get a look at the name tag at the foot of his bed, unsuccessfully. "What am I under?" he asked.

"Routarou Miyano, Japanese citizen," Tsuna recited with feigned nonchalance. His eyes were hard. "You can thank the Vongola for that, Mukuro, and for also covering up the fact that you have no existing medical records _nor_ any of the proper vaccinations needed in the last two decades."

"I didn't know you cared, Sawada Tsunayoshi."

Tsuna gave Mukuro a pained look. "What was I supposed to do when I found one of my Guardians living under a bridge?" he asked. "Did you even _know_ you had developed Lyme disease?"

Mukuro stared at the IV with distaste, and a tired shadow of his old smirk threatened to break out on his face. "You're mad, Sawada Tsunayoshi," he noted, still staring at the IV. It was odd, since Mukuro was usually the type of person to look people right in the eye when talking to them.

"Well, more like offended, really," Tsuna replied mildly, playing with the ends of his shirt. He didn't like reprimanding people, since he rarely felt he was in a position to do so. But this... "What you three did was completely idiotic. I offered to help you, and instead you—you get yourselves almost killed!"

"Ku, fu, fu." It was a humorless laugh, and like a spoiled cake: all frosting and sweetness, but once your teeth set in you found yourself chewing on maggots and squirming things and something truly nasty. Mukuro's eyes were still on the drip. "Really," he shook his head and absently brought a hand up to rub at the faint scar tissue below his right eye, "you don't understand."

"I think I do," Tsuna said quietly. "For one thing, you don't like doctors or hospitals. I may not know exactly what happened with your family all those years ago, but I do know they experimented on all of you and that you've been living on your own ever since. Something like that...well, I can see why you guys would think that you don't need anyone else."

Mukuro had finally torn his eyes away from the IV and was looking at Tsuna with an odd mixture of contemplation, bitterness, and amusement in his eyes.

"It's something a lot of our Family has trouble admitting," Tsuna said, "but it's okay to have help sometimes, and to trust in people."

Another laugh escaped Mukuro's lips. "You're odd, Sawada Tsunayoshi," he said. Silence fell upon them. For a moment there was only the sterile smells of the hospital to tickle their noses and the faint noises of beeping machinery to satisfy their ears. Mukuro let his eyes stray to Chrome, who was curled up in her chair in a deep sleep.

"She stays over here every night," Tsuna stated, also looking at her. He turned back to Mukuro. "She saved your lives, you know."

Mukuro let his gaze rest on her for a moment longer with something that, if it hadn't been Mukuro, others would have mistaken for fondness. "Why do you care so much for my well being?" he finally asked. Unlike most of what Mukuro said, the question held genuine confusion. Tsuna could understand that.

"Because that's what Family does," he replied. "If you remember your mother or your father— " Mukuro shook his head slowly, smiling twisted— "anyway, Family looks out for each other. If I was badly hurt, would you worry about me?"

Mukuro looked thoughtful. "Probably not," he replied. Tsuna said nothing, for he saw a different truth in Mukuro's eyes. Somewhere.

"You know, Kyouya came by the other day," Mukuro recalled, changing the subject. "He thought I was asleep." He smirked. "I wasn't."

"He was worried too," Tsuna pointed out. "You had a fever of 40 for two days, your white blood cell count is dangerously low, and you're being fed through a tube."

Mukuro's smirk widened in an effort to not look uncomfortable. With most people, it would have worked.

"There's one thing I want to confirm with you, Mukuro," Tsuna remembered suddenly. "It was bothering me for a while."

"And what may that be, Sawada Tsunayoshi?"

"Your illusions over Kokuyo Land," Tsuna began, "I was wondering why they disappeared after all these years."

Mukuro's bony shoulders jostled once in a shrug, and he picked an a nonexistent spot of lint on his hospital robe. "I simply got tired of wasting my power on unnecessary things," he said.

Tsuna shook his head. "No, I don't think that's it. In case you haven't noticed, Mukuro, I've _seen_ Kokuyo Land recently. It was hardly suitable for living." _Hardly suitable_ could have easily replaced the word "understatement" in the dictionary; Tsuna didn't even want to imagine to what proportions the amount of vermin there had been allowed to grow.

Mukuro had kept the park hidden for so long, but nothing lasts forever.

"Could it be...that you wanted change?"

Mukuro scrutinized Tsuna for a moment, a slight crease forming a slash across his pale brow. "I'm tired, Sawada Tsunayoshi," he replied finally, closing his eyes. "I think I will sleep now."

A smile graced Tsuna's features, but nonetheless he nodded and rose. "I think I understand you a little better, Mukuro."

"Think what you wish," Mukuro replied faintly from the bed.

"And be sure to thank Hibari-san for the private room once you get better. I'm sure the regular nurses would have been very curious as to why you spend over 90% of your nights in REM sleep," Tsuna remembered from the rather dry report Hibari's medics had given him the other day. "Or why Chikusa shows symptoms of a prefrontal lobotomy and Ken has traces of animal DNA in his chromosomes."

He departed then, mind full of thoughts and preparations to make Kokuyo an official home in the Vongola Headquarters. This time Tsuna doubted they would be quite as eager to expostulate.

Once Tsuna had left, Mukuro let his eyes crack open again and turned his head to face Chrome. "Heh. Our boss really is an interesting character," he told her quietly. The only response he got was a slight snore, and it was only then that he allowed himself to smile fondly.

"Thank you, dear Chrome."

_The end._


End file.
